I mean....it meaning the game Byleth came from, seeing he was counting up to the numbered title it was in the series, it was a hint in that case, just entirely misinterpreted because who the hell's expecting the take-away from his half-dab was to start counting in binary?

Technically yes, but It's only a hint if you have the benefit of hindsight after already knowing what it was. My point was that it was not intended as some cryptic cipher to be decoded by fans to figure out the next character. Since it was cropped from the video it's almost certain that Sakurai didn't even know anyone would see that particular image before the direct aired.

Come to think of it, I can't think of a single instance where there actually was a "hint" in the sense that the Western Smash fanbase has come to define it. All those theories over screenshots, random tweets, potted plants and chair colors never once actually amounted to anything.

Re: Super Smash Bros Ultimate

It was not a "hint," per se. He did a weird thing in the Byleth reveal direct where he counted the number of Fire Emblem games in binary on one had, and whoever does the social media announcements took a still frame of what looked like him striking a pose during the middle of it, and used that as the promo image to announce the direct before it happened. It was just a still image of him holding out three fingers, that had no direct tie to Byleth in anyway.

Of course, the fans immediately assumed it was supposed to be a hint and started arguing over whether it was "3" or "W" and what that allegedly confirmed. Fans be crazy like that.

Sakurai's latest Famitsu article talks about how he has a lot more time to play video games now that he and his team are all working from home, but he's become too nervous to talk about which games he's playing on social media or anywhere else because Smash Bros fans (Western fans in particular) always assume that any time he ever talks about a game it's a confirmation that that game is coming to Smash Bros. So he's had to make it a habit of never mentioning any video game by name or attending any event or program involving any specific game, so fans don't mistakenly get their hopes up.

It must be so surreal to be Sakurai. I can't think of any other famous game dev with a fan following so utterly bizarre and illogical in their devotion.

Re: gaming news that don't deserve their own thread

Sega's getting back into the games hardware business with the preposterously useless Game Gear Micro.

Comes with buttons that are demonstrably too small for anyone older than 5 to be able to use, and a 29mm display that is literally smaller than your average wristwatch. But don't worry, they have a separate attachment that clips onto it and makes the screen actually visible to the human eye! But you can only get it if you pre-order all four versions of the thing and buy them all at $45 a pop. Also there's only four games preloaded on each model, so if for some reason you just had to have this thing, but also wanted to be able to play both Sonic the Hedgehog and Shining Force, you still have to buy multiple units!

Everything about this is hilariously awful and I can't imagine what could have possibly convinced them this was a good business model.

Re: Death Battle (And sprite fight animations)

But if that were the case then the entire series becomes pointless because 90% of the fights would never happen in-character. Obi-Wan and Kakashi are both smart enough to know to not immediately escalate to violence with an unknown enemy. Green Lantern wouldn't just start beating up a random kid like Ben 10. Mario and Sonic are canonically on very friendly terms thanks to the Olympics games.

IDK, it just strikes me as being super nit-picky over after the fact set dressing.

Re: Death Battle (And sprite fight animations)

No offense intended in any way, shape, or form here, but "a low-level B-List jobber character from Dragon Ball could still effortlessly destroy someone who is demonstrably the strongest existence in his entire universe" is exactly the kind of blind fanboy over-hyping that makes putting Dragon Ball characters in Death Battle so utterly insufferable. Dragon Ball HAS to always be the best and the coolest. Every individual character in Dragon Ball HAS to be the strongest and most powerful character in all forms of media ever conceived of. Anything that even vaguely, accidentally suggests otherwise is wrong and terrible and the person who said it is a biased hater who is too stupid to know how cool Dragon Ball is, but is also somehow jealous that Dragon Ball is cooler than (other thing). It's the worst.

Re: Death Battle (And sprite fight animations)

Come to think of it, they could feasibly sell him as an opponent for Saitama. They're both presented as immeasurably powerful, god-like figures who're so strong they're no longer capable of giving a shit, and they both are constantly limiting their own strength to try and make fights slightly less boring.

Re: Death Battle (And sprite fight animations)

I can't believe I made a joke about them using yottatons as an intentionally absurd measurement metric and then very next episode they turn around and actually use it.

Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty

I mean, is anyone really surprised that DC Comics' trademark Batshit Bonkers Power Scaling took the win? At this point any non-Batman family character from DC should just be preemptively declared the winner. If they're a DC character with any form of superpower then chances are someone once wrote a story about how they blinked hard enough to atomize an entire parallel universe in under a microsecond.

So the main series is on hiatus until August, but the next episode will be Beerus vs... someone. Hoo boy, sure can't wait for all the Dragon Ball fanboys to crawl out of the woodwork again to explain how incredibly angry they are about it regardless of who wins.

Re: Jump Force (Naruto, DBZ, One Piece, Death Note)

Yeah, it's not a particularly good game by any stretch of the imagination but it's not as catastrophic as the internet hyperbole machine would have you believe, either. It's a lot of clearly cut corners, reused assets and code, and genuinely awful decisions, but it's not like it's fundamentally broken. What I am amazed by is that this late after a mediocre launch they're still developing paid DLC but they're not addressing the core problems people had with the gameplay.

BTW, the rest of the DLC pack was announced to include Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter, and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Just in case anyone was worried they might actually attempt some variety in the roster.

Re: Death Battle (And sprite fight animations)

I loved Danny Phantom and never watched a single second of American Dragon growing up, so my expectations were a little skewed going into this one. Although I will say that it was actually super interesting to see a fight between such relatively low-power characters. Since strength or speed didn't boil down to "this character is equal to 2000 yottatons of TNT," the comparisons between their abilities and skills became a lot more relevant in their decision making.

Next up is the battle of warrior princesses and not a Xena to be found. Wonder if they'll stick with classic She-Ra or the Netflix reboot, since to my understanding they're pretty wildly different interpretations of the character.

Re: Super Smash Bros Ultimate

At a guess, I think the joke is that the fifth character is going to be another rep from a franchise that fans feel is already too heavily represented, which is why it's a combination of Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and Kid Icarus, and also has another Link thrown in for good measure.

Re: The Nintendo News Thread

I know Tetris Attack is it's own whole thing with a bunch of spinoffs and whatnot, but the original game never left actually left Japan despite become really well known among the Nintendo community.

Also, the Chinese trailer for the new Paper Mario showed off partner characters in combat, but was quickly taken down.

Which either means it's a scrapped feature that accidentally got left in this particular cut of the trailer or - much more likely because Nintendo does this shit all the time - that's a feature they didn't mean to reveal yet and are trying to bury it.

Yajirobe is the best and most underrated character in the entire Dragon Ball franchise.

Re: The Nintendo News Thread

Out of absolutely nowhere, they announce a brand new Paper Mario game that's being released in less than two months, that appears at least at a glance to skew towards the older games with RPG combat and partner characters. All this without a Nintendo Direct or any kind of fanfare. I have to wonder what they're thinking announcing it this way.

It doesn't look too bad at the moment, though. The last two Paper Mario games were pretty terrible, but this trailer seems to offer quite a few things to be optimistic about.